In junior college, thirty-eight years ago, a sociology professor predicted the current resurgence of handcrafted items. He said the increasing mechanization and mass culture would create a desire for the personal, the handmade, and the individualized.

I was reminded of that prediction this morning when I ran across an admonition to Buy Homemade this holiday season. In the last five years, my husband and I have sold our handmade jewelry, made of Jerry's lampworked beads and my silver designs. We've discontinued that business as my memoir nears publication, but the pleasure of the personal transaction remains. Our customers received not only bits of beauty made by the hands of someone they'd met, but we enjoyed the many conversations about life and art that resulted. I've yet to have such a conversation with a Wal-Mart clerk.

I'd be dishonest if I said I don't appreciate the standard of living I enjoy because of the mechanization of, say, towels. I can afford absorbent, soft pieces of fabric to dry my hands because they are mass-produced in quantities large enough to allow middle-class Americans to buy them. Pioneers probably made do with linen they grew, spun, and wove themselves. But even more, I appreciate my mother-in-law's watercolors–personal, handmade, and some of them, individualized. Several are painted from photos I took.

This Thanksgiving, I'm grateful Jesus is personal and treats us each individually. He knows our hearts and our needs. He speaks personally in ways we can hear–images for some, the still, small voice for another, "feelings" for others. He takes the lives we give him and, like a craftperson, weaves beauty.

Father, thank you for all the beauty you have created, are creating, and will create–by your hand.